eric135

Food Inc; Certified Humane Raised and Handled Food

We have been unusually sensitive about the humane treatment of animals, after the loss of two of our kitties (sadly, both passed within a month of each other). My room mate rented Food Inc. It was quite an eye opener, but we had always known that, as meat eaters, we would have to reluctantly turn a blind eye about where our meat comes from. The movie did mention that there are farmers out there who also believe in the humane treatment of food animals -- that they have space to engage in "normal behaviors," get nutritious food, aren't pumped full of steroids or antibiotics, and are slaughtered humanely. We just didn't know how to find any of these products.

So I did some work on Google and found the website of Humane Farm Animal Care, which puts a label on foods that have been humanely raised. Looks like we may be spending more of our meat dollars at Whole Foods and/or Wild Oats.

Humane Farm Animal Care from Nathan Friedkin on Vimeo.

A list of Arizona stores that carry humanely produced meats.

Links

• 50 Reasons Why Star Wars is Better than Star Trek. Even as a ridiculous Star Trek fan (I am reading a Trek novel written by William Shatner right now), I still laughed.
• Doctor's Successful Removal of Gallbladder Through Woman's Vagina Impresses Some, Repulses Others. Get a load of the diagram of the surgical path. My God, I'm shocked they didn't go for her tonsils while they were in the area.
• When I used to teach Biology, in homage to the long sordid history of stupid stuff we'd make kids do, I'd assign students in groups to make posters, artwork, paper mache, decoupage, the whole bit. But that was before the Age of the Computer. Here's Mitosis to Rap. Here's Mitosis to Interpretive Dance. And my all-time favorite, Mitosis to Synchronized Swimming. Again, when we hit late telophase and those guys jump in to pinch off the two cell walls, I am doing the laugh-o-snort.
• I've been watching the news broadcasts of Cho Seung-Hui. It was released because we are drawn to images of guns and danger. The broadcasts had nothing to do with the mental health of anybody. Can we view the videos and tell ourselves, "Ah, yes, he's obviously seriously mentally disturbed" vs. "Ah, yes, he is sociopathological and will obviously kill someone" vs. "Ah, well, we really don't know for sure what this video means, because we are viewing it in a vaccuum." We need to figure out who has conducted a physicial and psychiatric assessment, and what those assessments showed, and who did anything about it. It should not be so unbelievable that not all loud obnoxious Asian gun-slinging college students will kill. To draw such conclusions on clips splashed on TV brings me back to the days when Governors and Senators stared at their TV sets at video clips of Terri Schiavo, one of them unbelievably a physician who claims she is aware of her circumstances even though he's never conducted a physical exam. A video tape shows a lot, but tells very little.

LInks

• An incredibly cool video, The Inner Life of a Cell. This is the short version (with a really cool soundtrack... anybody know what it is?). Here's the longer instructional version (still really really cool). My favorite part is the transport protein that pulls the vacuole through the cell. They look like they're wearing big brown slippers. Originally from Science Blog.
• Conan O'Brien's commencement speech to the Harvard Class of 2000. Funny.
• Children of Men. Totally not funny. Most of the movie felt like the first 30 minutes of Saving Private Ryan.
• If you are NOT a Nancy Grace fan (and I most certainly am not), you will find this clip from Jon Stewart very funny.
• I finished my taxes. I guess I had better re-check the numbers to make sure I don't get audited.
• An article from the BBC that says we don't necessarily need 8 hours of sleep. I need at least that, or I tend to drop off in the middle of a